It is difficult to conceive what the world would be without the Bible. Man, the crowning masterpiece of God's creation, made in God's image, with a spirit and soul of never-ending existence would, without this book, be in a far more deplorable condition than the beasts that perish. They live and are satisfied with an abundance of their simple food and comfort, for no immortal spirit is in them that cries out for something beyond; but the spirit of man is ever seeking something, even though he knows not exactly what, as the poet has said :

"An infant crying in the night,
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry! "

Poor Socrates, spending all his time trying to study out what would be conducive to human happiness, died because he rejected the gods that his people worshiped, yet himself, with no Bible, remained in ignorance of the true God.

Man has a natural conscience which, as the poet says,

" Makes cowards of us all; "

and when darkness falls upon the earth, and he looks up to the canopy of heaven, where countless orbs scintillate so brilliantly-so far above him!- he knows that some infinite power has brought them into being, and cries out, "Oh that I knew where I might find Him ! " (Job 23 :3). And, in the hour of anguish, when some loved voice which made music in our life is hushed in death, how dense the gloom where no Bible is, where the word of Him who has the keys of death and hell is not heard-"I am the resurrection and the life:he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."

The truth of the soul's immortality is innate in man. We see it even in the heathen and the savage. The one brings food, and the other bows and arrows, to the graves of his dead. Without the Bible we would be a traveler with no guide, a pilot without a compass, a soldier with no weapon; and, beyond all this, and of infinitely more importance than all else, a sinner -without a Saviour! For in the Bible alone is God's salvation revealed, in His own Son bearing the judgment of the guilty, that whosoever receives Him by faith may not perish but have everlasting life, and dwell with God in everlasting joy. All this we find in God's word, to which He has pledged Himself, and of which " not one jot or tittle shall pass away till all be fulfilled." M. F. S.